Refusing to be Invisible: Turkish Women in Berlin

Abstract

Aysel Özakin, a Turkish writer and broadcaster in her late thirties, has made a name for herself in political and literary circles in West Berlin. Articles about her have appeared in German newspapers. As a writer who dresses in jeans and sweaters, she is seen as atypical; Berlin women express astonishment that although she had been living in Berlin for only a few years, her ideas are so ‘modern’ and her dress style so fashionable. Aysel finds this unacceptable. She dislikes being patronised in ways which reinforce German stereotypes of Turkish women. Similarly, although she has written on both feminist and migrant worker themes, she rejects these categories as too limited for characterising her work: ‘Nobody expected that Henry Miller would only write about the problems of being a foreigner in France’ (Berliner Tageszeitung, 20 April 84).